The Art of Precision: Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is all about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, confirming that design details meet code regulations, stakeholder requirements, and quality standards. 

Hosted by: 
Matt Gerstner - BWBR Podcast Host and Producer

Guests:
Dan Hottinger - BWBR, Principal
Todd Warren - BWBR, Quality Assurance Specialist

Music provided by Artlist.io
Siberian Summer by Sunny Fruit
DuDa by Ian Post

If you like what we are doing with our podcasts please subscribe and leave us a review!
You can also connect with us on any of our social media sites!
https://www.facebook.com/BWBRsolutions
https://twitter.com/BWBR
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bwbr-architects/
https://www.bwbr.com/side-of-design-podcast/

Transcript

Matthew Gerstner

This is Side of Design from BWBR. A podcast discussing all aspects of design with knowledge leaders from every part of the industry. Hello and welcome to Side of Design from BWBR. I'm Matt Gerstner, your host for this episode. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the quality assurance process of BWBR. We'll be talking about reasons why BWBR does what they do. Why quality is stressed so much in construction documents, and how the effectiveness of the quality assurance process and continuing education efforts are measured. I'm pleased to have two guests from BWBR's quality assurance team today. Both bring a wealth of construction and documentation knowledge. Joining me today are Dan Hottinger, principal at BWBR, and Todd Warren, Quality Assurance Specialist. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Dan has been with BWBR for more than two decades and brings an incredible attention to detail. He specializes in projects that have highly technical requirements and logistical challenges. Dan's hands-on approach to management effectively orchestrates collaboration between in house design teams, engineering and specialty consultants and contracting partners. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Todd has been with BWBR for over two decades as well. He brings highly creative solutions and a detail oriented approach to his work, ensuring each piece of a design will come together and fit just right. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Dan, Todd, thank you for joining us today. I know we've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'm just going to get right to it. Dan, quality assurance, Why is it such an important part of BWBR's documentation process?

Dan Hottinger  

Reputation is easy to destroy. It can be destroyed with a single project and it's almost impossible to regain. And it takes a really long time to do it. Ford is a great example. So the Ford Motor Company back in the 70s. Most of the big three the domestic automakers had in the 60's and early 70's what they call planned obsolescence, which meant they only designed a car that would last about three years because they wanted you to come in and buy another car because your old car broke down or became unreliable. It had created constant churn on the sales floor to buy new cars. Back then if you can get a car to last 100,000 miles you were doing something right or you were a backyard mechanic. Then the 70's come along and the Japanese imports enter the market that Datsun's, the Toyota's, the Honda's. Not only did they get really good gas mileage, but they were bulletproof. They were very reliable. They lasted well beyond 100,000 miles without or with a minimal amount of maintenance. Ford in 1983 is watching its market share plunge. They're thinking oh my gosh, how are we going to plug all these holes in the dike, what are we going to do? And when they went out and did polling, what they learned is that nobody considered a Ford vehicle very reliable. They, you know, Ford's motto used to be first on race day. And now the joke was they were fix or repair daily. So, you know, once you have that kind of reputation, now you have to start fixing it. So in 1983 they came out with this with ad campaign, "Ford quality is job one". Some of you, myself, I'm old enough to remember the commercials. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Yeah.

Dan Hottinger  

You know, they talked about how high quality a Ford vehicle was and things like that. However, that reputation stuck with them. And in the 90's you know, they're making fun of the Ford quality as job one because they just hadn't done their way out of that hole. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Right, right. 

Dan Hottinger  

And then in 1997, and 2003, they're still running that ad campaign. 20 years later, they're still trying to convince people, "Hey, our cars have a high quality". We don't want to fall into that trap, because that happens to architectural firms as well.

Matthew Gerstner  

Well, I can see that just being a huge problem. So in the competitive environment, such as project interviews, what are the differentiators for BWBR? What kind of things does BWBR talk about?

Dan Hottinger  

We talk about the quality of the design solutions that we come up with. We talk about the quality of the client experience during the design phase, how we listen how we, you know, we have the experience to translate what you need into a really good design. We talk about the quality of the design documentation, because we tell them that the quality of the design documentation has a direct effect on the quality of the construction experience in the field. A good set of documents is going to be, is crucial to a smooth experience in the field. Remember, that experience in the field is the last thing that client remembers. It doesn't matter how good the design was. It doesn't matter how fun the meetings were during the user sessions. If we get out in the field and lay an egg because the documents were not coordinated, the construction, the mechanical has ductwork below the ceiling, the ceilings are below the window heads, all of those small things that just, you know, death by 1000, tiny pinpricks out in the field. Those are the things that create a bad taste in a client's mouth during the construction experience. I mean, right out of our marketing, material, BWBR designs, sophisticated building types. But what I wanted to point out in the very first item that we put in here is fewer errors and omissions help reduce change orders to ultimately reduce the cost of instruction and foster happy owners. We are committed to having complete high quality documents. That's right in our marketing materials that goes out in every RFP response that we put together.

Dan Hottinger  

I'll add to Dan's pep talk there that I'm sure I'm not alone. But I have many projects with here, sort of sorry tales from my clients or owners who had a terrible experience with last architect, and how, you know, I think it's a warning to us that we better do better. And, you know, most of the reason they're not picking that architect is is a bad experience. And and like Dan said, it's typically a bad experience in construction. Change orders, things that didn't work out lots of issues and questions and that's the taste that gets left left in their mouth and whatever excitement they had at the interview, and the kickoff meetings was all kind of taken away, because the construction didn't go very well. So that's really where we want to hit it. And we want to make sure that our construction is as smooth as possible. Our CA People are fantastic. They do a great job of shepherding that and helping that along and that, that's what we leave. That's the impression we leave with our clients and our owners. And that's kind of what makes them keep coming back.

Matthew Gerstner  

Okay, so there's a lot on the line when it comes to making sure a project goes well like smooth construction process and client satisfaction to what projects quality within a documentation set.

Dan Hottinger  

It's the little things Believe it or not. It's the small things that trip you up, it's the small things that make you look less experienced and less of an expert at what you're doing. Correct spelling is the easiest way to make yourself look silly. out in the field. There are communication experts who will tell you that people notice that kind of stuff. And 59% Say that bad grammar and obvious spelling errors would make them reconsider the expertise of the presenter. It's, it's that perception of expertise that is definitely affected by that. Does it have content that is stacked and organized in a manner that is easy to find? Does it make sense? You know, is it well put together? Is it a sheet that's just details that are pell mell all over the place and make no sense whatsoever and you know, one wall section has a detail has the details on four different sheets, which in my mind makes no sense. It's those small things, and well organized a well laid out she just projects professionalism. In my QA experience, every single time I've ever seen see structural or see mechanical, I can go into mechanical or I can go into structural and it'll say see architectural. Having those notes complete and making sure that they're coordinated. I mean, I guarantee you that if you have a circular note like that, it'll create an RFI. And an RFI takes 45 minutes to an hour to process for that team. And if you have, I don't know, 10 of those that's 10 wasted hours during that phase, people running around answering questions have and sometimes in those instance, it will point out that you don't have it coordinated, and then it turns into a problem. And then coordination with a consultant sheets. Are they the same scale as the architectural sheets. I know that seems small. But it's a big difference when you're going through the set when scale changes, because it's hard to know where you're at on the sheet. 

Dan Hottinger  

It sounds like there's a certain level of detail that is involved here. And we know buildings and architectural projects come in all sizes and complexities. And I'm sure teams experience some amount of anxiety when it comes to thinking about going through the QA process for their projects. I understand BWBR has a QA form for the project teams that outlines the steps for the process. Todd, can you walk us through the form and the QA process from starting a project all the way through construction? 

Todd Warren  

The most recent version of the QA form is two pages. It can appear pretty daunting. And I guess once you kind of learn what's in there, and what needs to be done, I think it'll be kind of easier to navigate and not seem as cumbersome as maybe it looks at first glance. It just keeps a record of everything you've kind of done throughout the project and this is really your road, your roadmap...

Todd Warren  

... for the process. Everything on here is kind of in order In the steps, you would do it. And there's some things that will apply to your project some things that won't. Right up front, kind of one of the first steps of the process, and this is as early as we can kind of do it on a project is to have, to talk about Performance Design. And for a lot of projects that are new buildings or bigger projects, they're going to need a Performance Baseline Workshop, which happens right up as part of kickoff, it may be already being talked about in the interview, about goals, sustainability goals for this project. And so that's kind of right up front, we need to kind of bake that stuff into the design right from the get go. The performance Design Group, PDG, is there to help and we need to kind of get that set up, that workshop, right away so that we can, like I said, we can bake that stuff right into the design, and everybody's on the same page and working towards the same goals. Now, we say it's required on all projects. But we obviously recognize that there are lots of little projects in the office that might be one room, two room, you know, small little area remodels that may not have lots of sustainability opportunities, let's say. But we would still like to have a touch base between every project and the performance design group to talk that through. So we recommend reaching out to performance design and maybe you're assigned a resource person for your project. And make sure that you've had a conversation. And if it's a one room, you know, X-ray equipment update or something, there may may just be a phone call. And you can kind of talk through it. And that's it. And you don't need a whole workshop. But we need to kind of have that touch base and talk through each with every project to make sure we're catching everything. And like I said, we're working towards more sustainable projects, meeting our 2030 goals as a firm. So even if you have a remodel, and you think there's nothing to it, you may be surprised. Sometimes we can have discussions about you know, lighting controls on Office remodels. Or if you've got a bunch of toilet rooms you're doing on a remodel project, maybe we can talk about fixtures, low-flow, or waterless fixtures. So there are things you can do just about in every project. And so that performance baseline workshop can be tailored to kind of what you need. But that's the first one out of the gate. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Okay 

Todd Warren  

Next one would be the project initiation meeting. And it's generally an early SD meeting with QA. And people from Digital Practice and Performance Design will be there. And we can talk very early about the project as a whole, what's there, how the project gets set up, a little bit of sustainability talk again, and it's a good touch point, for different groups and QA to kind of meet with a team early understand their project and their needs, and maybe we can share some wisdom, or maybe we can point your team to another team that's working on something very similar another corner of the office or you know have be able to connect you with resources on what maybe is particular things you have in that project where we might have somebody in the office who has some expertise. 

Todd Warren  

Another one that's required on all projects. And this one kind of is obvious is a code conformance review meeting, this would happen sort of usually towards the end of SD when the plan is settling in, we're getting towards a final layout, we need to have a meeting between the team and encode the code resource person for that project and make sure that our planning, our design, is following code, and we're not going to trip ourselves up or paint ourselves in any corners with code issues. And it's a great time for the code resource assigned your project to kind of get a feel for what's going on. Feel out how complicated it is, who's the jurisdiction, there's all kinds of fun wrinkles between different states, amendments and things like that. So it's a good way to make sure that everything's on the right track at the end of SD before you start really hitting production and code issues or kind of getting settled in. Doesn't mean you'll have everything figured out. But that's that first big overview and making sure that we're headed in the right direction. 

Matt  

Okay.

Todd Warren  

So then we hit the end of SD basically, and there's a little line in there for a principal in charge to initial and kind of sign off. This is a way to kind of say that everybody's on the same page at the end of SD that you know, the initial design is set, and we're ready to kind of move ahead with the project and the principal can go in and check that off. 

Todd Warren  

So the very end of SD or beginning of DD is where the next meeting would happen and it would be a mini-set review meeting and this is one we want we would like to have on all projects, regardless of size. If it's one room, or it's a six story giant building, we really should do this on all projects so that this is a step in the process where you're about to start really documenting a building. And if it's a small project, you're maybe heading straight to CD's at this point, if it's a bigger project, you're heading into DD, but the Revit model is going to start ramping up and things are going to start to happen. And this is a way to kind of talk through what needs to be documented, and how you're going to document it. How big is the plan, how many you know, how many zones are we going to need us to get it on multiple sheets? Which of those zones, where should they start and stop? Which way should North be oriented on the sheet? What's the best way to kind of organize pieces? You know, do if it's a remodel, do need a roof plan that we can kind of talk through all that and sort of brainstorm in this meeting, how we're going to lay this out what plans you need. What details, what's all the pieces and parts, so you need to be documented, and it starts to get, give the team a roadmap that here's what we need to get through either DD or CD's. And we're gonna get that Revit model set up and get everybody off on the right foot. And occasionally we off-road in that meeting, we talk about issues in the project, you know, some details or things that might be tricky. And so there, there are ways to kind of just have that connection with QA there and talk through stuff that's coming up, but you're getting ready to really start documenting the project. We recommend that everybody have a mini set review meetings, some of those can be 30 minutes, you know, even 15 minutes, but you know, usually we schedule an hour. And if we take the whole time, you know we do if we don't need it all we can end early.

Todd Warren  

Then what used to be called the "five, five, five", we've given it a new name, exterior design and detail review meeting to be a little more descriptive. This would be kind of a mid DD meeting, maybe 50%. This is really recommended for all projects that have exterior shell like you know, additions or new buildings. And it's two parts, it's both a design review and kind of an exterior detailing review. Generally what happens is we walk around the building in either in 3D view, or the Revit model. And we kind of take a look at the design. And by this time, the team maybe is starting to try to detail and set up the wall types and wall sections and starting to detail. And we can identify maybe tricky parts of the design that either are, you know, becoming difficult to resolve, or maybe tricky to detail. And with a QA person and a design lead in that meeting we can maybe talk about how to best detail something or maybe how to tweak the design just slightly to make something easier to detail and maybe more durable or, or less prone to leaks or whatever. But we can kind of go around and kind of mid DD help kickstart some of that discussion and help out the team as you're moving along with detailing. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Right

Todd Warren  

Then we're in DD and if you have a formal sort of DD phase in your project, which basically all larger projects do, we're going to have a Design Development issue. And so at that point, we would do a QA of that Design Development issue set. So at 95% DD Issue, we're going to print the entire set. We'll print the individual PDF's, so we can kind of make combined sets to put into a Bluebeam session we'll get all our consultants sets, get them to do the same. And we'll have a whole Bluebeam session with all of it in there. And the entire team can get in there and take a look. And the PM can get in there and make comments on things that maybe were in the meetings. The Principal in Charge can get in there and take a look at how everything's going. And then obviously there's multiple kinds of QA reviewers, there's Architectural QA, and Interiors QA, and code QA, and they're all going to get in there and make comments. And this is our kind of chance to get in there and mark up the easy stuff, the misspellings and the things that are maybe miss-referenced, or confused. DD is also where we're making maybe bigger comments about something that might be less expensive or something that maybe we should think about doing this a little different way because it's going to be easier to construct or coordinate with our engineers. And it's time to really hit that milestone that checkpoint and make sure that everything's coming together in DD. And if you have a project that's going to be a GMP, you know, the Contractors going to develop a Guaranteed Maximum Price from this DD set, then this QA becomes pretty critical. We need to make sure that everything's that needs to be priced is in that set, and it's explained well enough that a contractor can put a price on it and get a cost estimate that's going to hold up for the rest of the project. So we do ask that question in the invite if it's going to be a GMP, because then we can kind of look at it and maybe a more critical way and reach out to the team if we think there's issues that are going to cause some trouble for GMP. So that's DD. And we understand they're small projects that jump straight from SD to CD's, and some of those small remodels so you may, not every project will have a DD QA, but certainly the larger ones always do. 

Todd Warren  

So then, in the CD phase, there's kind of a mid CD review that is optional, but can be valuable. And it's mostly for larger, more complicated projects. We call it a CD Technical Review Meeting. And it would usually involve the engineers and last half a day, or maybe all of a day. We have sets of checklists that we can go through, where they're basically coordination issues and things to check for between cross-coordination between us and the engineers, and the engineers and each other. And it's a way to kind of make sure halfway through CD that issues aren't falling through the cracks, things aren't getting lost in the shuffle. It's, you know, big big M&E coordination items. Kind of look into the issues. Do you have a snowmelt system under your sidewalk is landscape and civil aware that? You know, can we define the extents, things like that, that we're going to kind of check through as we go through that, I will just say that, we don't do a whole lot of these each year. And when we do a handful kind of for some bigger projects. So it's not one that gets done all that often. But it can be helpful if you are on a particularly larger or maybe a medium sized project that's really complicated. So something that teams can opt for, if they want to and you know, that's kind of a discussion with the project team itself, they want to do this. So 50% CD is where that would kind of happen. 

Todd Warren  

So now we're up to the end of CD. And this is really the final step. And this is another one that every project in the office should have before it goes out. No matter how small it is, no matter what we're doing, we really ought to have QA, take a look at it before it goes out the door for a permit and construction. And again, this is going to be the Architectural Reviewer, the Interiors Reviewer and Code Reviewer, and it's our last chance to come look at everything. And this is where we're really trying to help every team just kind of polish what they have. You know, make sure that everything's in there. Everything's clear. You know, I'm looking at it from ... I'm trying to look at it like as if I'm the contractor or the bidders? Can I understand everything? Do I understand kind of what we're doing? Does it make sense? Am I pretty comfortable that I can build it? I can picture how we're going to build this. So this is really that final, that final polish, and it's kind of you know, so when you're at 95%, CD's, same thing, it's the whole set, it's all the consultants. We get individual PDFs of each sheet, and then everybody can get in there and start making comments. And we can, you know, really help put that polish on it. We can find those misspellings. We can do all that kind of fun stuff, too. So this is, this is an important step that every project should have no matter how big, how small.

Matthew Gerstner  

Incredible. 

Todd Warren  

So how do you do these steps? How do you actually get them done? So you know, scheduling kind of the pieces and parts of the QA process, we've tried to help streamline that and you request a meeting. Give BWBR QA kind of a timeframe when you need it done. And then we'll work backwards and figure out how to get that into the QA schedule. Critical pieces of this, the main critical piece in the drawing sets is how many sheets do you have? Like how big is this project. So an accurate count of your sheets, the architectural sheets and the consultant sheets is pretty critical, because that tells us how much time it's going to take for the QA reviewers to get through it. And then that sets up kind of a schedule like you tell us when you want it done. We will figure out how much time we need. And then we can kind of figure out where we need to get that QA started so we can meet your schedule. So whatever we can do to get that sheet count as close to what we think it's really going to be is important. And we know it won't be exact because you never quite know exactly, but get it as close as you can. And that makes a huge difference. 

Todd Warren  

Another little tip for scheduling drawing reviews is thinking about how much time you want to pick up all the comments and how much time you want to work on the drawings after that review is done. Having a few days can be pretty critical picking everything up to sorting out some coordination issues that we might find. Just being able to react to what those comments are. So, think through that I mean, bigger projects might have a week, or week and a half of time they want to work after the QA review is done. Smaller projects, you know, maybe it's three days, maybe four days. Trying to plan your QA review to end the day before you issue can be problematic. So if you give yourself an extra day to work on that usually helps me out or help you out. And if anything big comes up between a mechanical or electrical or some coordination meeting, if you give yourself a couple of days to resolve it, everybody will be better off. So don't plan on too tight. I guess as the short story, just give yourself a few days to pick everything up. When you're thinking about your QA schedule and your issue schedule. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Yeah. 

Todd Warren  

What to expect in a DD-CD QA of the drawing sets. It can be a few files, few small files for a small project. It could be a dozen gigantic files for a giant project. And basically, everybody's walking through that. People are assigned different colors. And that kind of helps everybody keep straight, who's making comments where. It gets very confusing if everybody's using red. You're not sure if it's a team member, or a QA person or consultant. So we kind of asked our consultants to use different colors too if they're making comments. It just lets everybody know, at a glance, kind of who's making the comment, and where it's coming from. And then as far as comments go, kind of word to the wise is, you know, we're looking at it, the QA folks are looking at it from kind of that contractor, lens and constructability, and maybe some design, and we're making comments, and we haven't been to all the meetings, or know all the conversations. So some of our comments may be questions about is this intentional, or this isn't normally the way we do this, we would typically do it different than what's shown here. So a lot of times, we're asking questions or making comments where maybe we're unsure. And teams should read through those and address them. And sometimes it might be, "well, no, it's that's a weird door size. But we know that the owner wants it that way." And that's and then you can move on being kind of just cross out that comment. Other ones might be a deeper comment that the team should discuss whether it should be like this way or that way. Or there's a more easier way to construct this if we just change the design slightly. And maybe that needs to be a deeper discussion with the whole team and not someone just making that decision. And then there's plenty of comments were, it's a straightforward thing to just fix this or add a note or fix the spelling, but you kind of run the gamut of comments. And I guess what I would say to the team and people reviewing that, just kind of think through what those comments are, what they mean to the team and what needs to be done and kind of look at him critically, some may not apply. Some might be well, we're confused, we don't understand what you're doing. And that in itself is a comment. But I will have things that are just general comments where I might say something about something and say, well, for future projects, you might want to try it this way instead, you know, or I might have a comment that says "important". Where I see something that's really critical that the team needs to look at that seems unresolved or might give us trouble in the field. So there's there's different levels. So just kind of read through them. Think through them. Don't blindly just kind of pick up react all of them. Just kind of, the team should really assess what those comments mean, and kind of what needs to be done. 

Matthew Gerstner  

Okay, that is quite the detailed process. Thank you for providing all that detail, Todd. I mean, it's clear BWBR has thought the process through. So now I'm wondering, how do you go about measuring document quality, or whether the QA process is effective. 

Dan Hottinger  

At the beginning of the year, we have the construction administrators scorecard, where we go through and we look at our grades that we get from the construction administrators on the field, we will have a session in October where we do a workshop where we talk about how we're doing. Where we accumulate all of the yearly data and we talk about where we're doing well, where we're not doing well. The client repeat rates is something that is pretty easy to measure, right? It's an easy measurement. It's something that kind of gives us an idea of how well or what our clients think of us. You know, 85% is a really good target. We consistently exceed that. But we have been doing over the past couple of years really, really well. Overall. I mean, if you look at it since 2019, we've been holding at about 94%. That is amazing. And it speaks to the experience, to the quality of the experience out in the field, right. Every single QA review has the reviewer of that of that drunk set and we log problem areas. We look at what the sheet count was reported, and what actually showed up. How much time it was scheduled for and how much time it took. Obviously, we can kind of tell if we are super busy, and we can't figure out why, Well, it's because we're being scheduled for 2200 sheets and 4000 sheets show up. That's an aggregate of all the projects together. But it's a trend that we have. And it's the reason why we're kind of thumping the drum on that is because a lot of sets show up that are supposed to be 20 sheets, and when they show up, they're 120 sheets. Now that is a swing of a one day review to a full week review. And that really kind of starts messing with our QA schedule as we're trying to fit everything together. 

Another measure of success is the look at our uninsured claims. What this does for us at BWBR is ... we are a dream client for a professional liability carrier. And this year, our liability insurance broker recommended that we shop around and find a good deal. This year, we were able to go out and increase our coverage. And we still had a six figure reduction in our professional liability cost, which is fantastic. If you think about it, that six figure reduction is something that we get to pass along to everybody. It's the kind of thing that is a good result for everybody. Right. 

Matthew Gerstner  

That is amazing. Dan, Todd, thank you both for the incredible insight today on the process and importance of QA in architecture. I know BWBR takes it very seriously, and it shows through on the quality of the documentation. 

Matthew Gerstner  

And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We will see you on the other side. 

Matthew Gerstner  

This has been cited designed from BWBR brought to you without any paid advertisements or commercials. If you found value in what you've heard today. Give us a like, leave us a comment, or better yet, share us with your network. You can also reach out to us if you'd like to share an idea for a show or start a discussion. Email us at sideofdesign@bwbr.com